Board of Trustees, Boston University

The Descent from Oduduwa: Claims of Superiority among Some Yoruba Traditional Rulers and
the Arts of Ancient Ife
Author(s): Cornelius O. Adepegba
Source: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1986), pp. 77-
92
Published by: Boston University African Studies Center
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/218696 .
Accessed: 08/05/2014 20:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
THE DESCENT FROM ODUDUWA: CLAIMS OF
SUPERIORITY AMONG SOME YORUBA TRADITIONAL

RULERS AND THE ARTS OF ANCIENT IFE

Cornelius 0. Adepegba

At no time in recent years have the conflicting claims of supremacy

among some Yoruba traditional rulers, particularly the Ooni of Ife
and the Alaafin of Oyo been more evident than between October 1983
and the present. In June 1984 the in-fighting between the rulers
became so embarrassing to the military government of Oyo State
(which includes the traditional domains of the two rulers) that the
governor had to warn the traditional rulers not to destroy the in-
stitution of Obaship handed down to them by their ancestors. Yet as
of July 1984, the supporters of the parties concerned were still
engaged in a war of words in Nigerian dailies.
On 1 October 1983, the tussle became open when, during his
swearing-in, the newly elected governor of the state, Omololu
Olunloyo, promised as traditional chief to both parties to find ways
of resolving their differences. Then, in the first meeting of the
Council of Obas held on 13 October (in which both the Ooni and the
Alaafin were absent for unannounced reasons), he also told the Obas
to decide on who would be their chairman. They were given the option
to decide on rotation.
Unlike the first meeting of the Council, the Ooni and the Ala-
afin were present at the second meeting and the tussle turned into
an open conflict which The Punch, a Nigerian daily, described as
"the last straw that broke the crisis open" the following day. In
that meeting of Thursday, 20 October, the Ooni, who was made the
chairman by Olunloyo's predecessor, referred to himself as the
father of all; some Obas were reported to have reacted unfavorably.
The Alaafin said that it was he who was the father of all, and that
the Ooni had apparently not read his history well. He was evidently
referring to Johnson's History of the Yorubas in which the Oyo ver-
sion of the origin of the Yoruba claims that the Ooni, as the care-
taker of the Yoruba shrines in Ife, was the descendant of a slave,
Adimu, while the Alaafin was a son of Oduduwa, the founding father
of Yoruba monarchy.
On 21 October The Punch reported that the new governor had prom-
ised to make the Alaafin chairman of the Council if he were elected.
It was probably in keeping with the promise that he suggested a
rotational system and finally decided that the Ooni should continue
to be chairman until 1984 when he would have completed his two terms
of two years. He did not indicate the basis for suggesting a rota-
tional system, but he seems to have based the idea on the aspira-
tions of certain members of the Council.

International Journal of African Hietorical Studies, 19, 1 (1986) 77

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
78 CORNELIUS0. ADEPEGBA

This essay is not intended to judge the propriety of any polit-

ical move on the issue. What the essay aims to do is to show how the
descent from Oduduwa, an aspect of Yoruba traditional history, has
been made a recurrent political issue of our time. This in itself is
not irrelevant, as it shows how the past can be cited for the'polit-
ical claims and counter-claims of the present.
Robin Law has thoroughly examined the heritage of Oduduwa from
the perspective of Oyo history. Making use of the various local
traditions of the Yoruba, he dismisses it as being used just as a
means of legitimacy by the Oyo rulers.1 The present article is
preoccupied with the analysis of the descent from Oduduwa from
available, concrete, and living cultural materials of the people
with a view to broadening our perceptions of Yoruba cultural his-
tory. The essay compares archaeological materials from ancient Ife
with some present cultural practices of the Yoruba to determine (1)
who Oduduwa is likely to have been, and (2) who his descendants were.
The issue is by far older than the early 1950s, which Olunloyo
was trying to suggest as its origin. In his address to the tradi-
tional rulers on 13 October 1983 and in his broadcast of 2 December
1983, he claimed that the struggle for supremacy between the two
rulers began with the formation of the Action Group (A.G.) in 1951.
The Action Group was the first political party to rule the former
Western Nigeria, including the Ijebu, Egba, Ekiti, Akure, Ondo, Owo,
Oyo, Ife, Ijesa, Ila and Benin kingdoms.
The Unity Party of Nigeria (the rival and opposition party to
Olunloyo's own party, the National Party of Nigeria) was headed by
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was also the founder of the Action Group.
Many members of the old Action Group were also members of the Unity
Party of Nigeria. It was during the first indigenous government of
the Action Group in the Western Region that the Ooni was first made
the president of the House of Chiefs and later the first Yoruba
governor. It was also during the government of the Action Group
under Chief Awolowo's leadership that Alaafin Adeyemi II, supported
by the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroon (N.C.N.C., then
the opposition party in Western Region), was deposed and sent into
exile, where he later died. In essence, what Olunloyo was implying
was that the issue of supremacy among the two rulers would not have
arisen if Chief Awolowo had not formed the Action Group around Odu-
duwa and Ife. The Ooni would have had to remain subordinate to the
Alaafin, as under the British, particularly during the time of Cap-
tain Ross. Ross was the Resident of Oyo province, which comprised
Ife, Ilesha, Ila, and Oyo. In Olunloyo's view, what the Action Group
government did was to reverse what the British had done. Besides
that, since his own National Party of Nigeria was shown by the re-
sults of the 1979 election to have had a wider geographical spread
in Nigeria, while its opponent, the Unity Party of Nigeria, had only
the former Western region as its stronghold, Olunloyo's 1983 state-
ment effectively labelled the Unity Party of Nigeria an ethnic or
tribal party - an accusation that the N.C.N.C. had levelled against
the Action Group during the first republic.

IR.C.C. Law, "The Heritage of Oduduwa: Traditional History and Political

Propaganda Among the Yoruba," JournaZ of African History, XIV, 2 (1973), 307-322,
and also R.C.C. Law, The Oyo Hmpire, c. 1600 - c. 1836 (Oxford, 1977).

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROMODUDUWA 79

From another angle, however, one would say that Chief Awolowo,
at the time he formed the Action Group, could not have succeeded if
he had used any Yoruba town other than Ife, much less any non-Yoruba
base. The pre-eminence of Ife as the origin of the Yoruba was never
challenged and neither had any section of the Yoruba in Nigeria
denied that Oduduwa, the supposed father of the Yoruba and the foun-
der of their monarchy, was a king in Ife. Even when the British were
upholding the Alaafin's supremacy, a section of Oyo domain, particu-
larly Ibadan, did not stop protesting until it was separated from
Oyo native administration in 1934.
Since Chief Awolowo was working with Dr. Azikiwe, who led the
N.C.N.C. until he formed his own party, it would not have been ex-
pedient for him to start his own party from the east, the home base
of Dr. Azikiwe and the N.C.N.C., or the north, a place with which he
was not familiar and the stronghold of the Northern Peoples' Con-
gress. The N.C.N.C. was the only party which reflected a widespread
outlook in its formation, but this is because Dr. Azikiwe for a long
time was based in Lagos, and had the advantage of experience in the
earlier nationalist struggle.
The origin of the conflict may more appropriately be credited to
the British, who cannot be absolved of double-dealing in their meth-
ods of colonial rule. Despite the fact that the sovereignty of each
of the Yoruba kingdoms was recognized by the series of treaties
signed between each of them and the British before any agreement was
ever signed with Oyo, another treaty, signed in 1893, acknowledged
the Alaafin as the overall ruler of Yorubaland.2
The origin of the latter treaty lay in the British desire to
gain direct access to the trade of Ibadan, which was being denied by
the Ijebu and the Egba, with the support of Ife (Ijebu had been an
ally of Ife since the Owu war).3 Ibadan recognized the overlord-
ship of the Alaafin despite its military strength, but simultane-
ously supported the British when Ijebu-Ode was attacked. The British
needed Ibadan trade as much as Ibadan needed British arms. So the
British rewarded their allies; hence the treaty recognizing the
overall headship of Oyo in Yorubaland was signed. It is possible
that since the British first dealt with the Egba, who had just
fought and won their independence from Oyo, they logically thought
that the Great Oyo empire covered all of Yorubaland.
No sooner was the treaty signed than the error of having ac-
cepted the Alaafin as the supreme ruler of Yorubaland was discov-
ered. This might have arisen from the desire to build indirect rule
on historic foundations. In a confidential dispatch on the order of
precedence of the Yoruba rulers to the governor of Lagos, a British
Resident of Oyo Province, H. L. Ward Price, noted that various Yo-
ruba rulers used to make false claims before British officials on

2Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Protection Between King (Alaafin) of Oyo and
Head of Yorubaland and H.E., C.T. Carter on behalf of the H.M. the Queen, January
1893, CSO 5/1/18 in the National Archives, Ibadan (henceforth NAI) was signed after
a different treaty had been signed with some other Yoruba rulers. For such a treaty
signed with the Ooni, see Treaty Between H.M. the Queen and the King, Chiefs, Elders
and People of Ife, 22 Nay 1888, CSO 5/1/15, NAI.

3J.F.A. Ajayi and S.A. Akintoye, "Yorubaland in the Nineteenth Century," in 0.

Ikime, ed., Groundworkof Nigerian History (Ibadan, 1980), 283.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
80 CORNELIUS0. ADEPEGBA

the matter and that he had ample evidence that the Ooni was the
leading chief.4
The British were then faced with a dilemma. To go back on what
they had done was distasteful. But the reality of the situation
forced them to turn to the Ooni on certain issues involving tradi-
tional rulers even outside Oyo Province. For example, in 1902 when
there was a protest from the Akarigbo of Sagamu over the wearing of
a beaded crown by the ruler of Epe, the clerk on native affairs in
the Government House, Lagos, Henry Libert, had to write for clarifi-
cation from the Ooni, whom he described as "the recognized head in
Yorubaland who has the right of issuing crowns at an early date."5
In the following year, in a letter to the British travelling commis-
sioner at Ilesa on the right of the Ooni to allow the Olosi of Osi
in Ekiti to wear a crown, C. H. Elgee, the travelling commissioner's
boss at Ibadan, wrote: "it does appear to me that the Oni [Ooni] had
not in any way overstepped his rights. His power to confer crowns is
universal and unique in Yorubaland."6
This traditional position of the Ooni notwithstanding, the na-
tive administration was still to be headed by the Alaafin. When
Captain Ross was the Resident of the province, he deliberately pur-
sued the policy of making the Alaafin supreme among the other major
obas of the province. Atanda refers to how Captain Ross set up a
court of appeal for the province and made the Alaafin its chairman,
with the Ooni and the Owa of Ilesa as subordinates.7 The action
was, however, resisted by these two rulers, who boycotted the court.
Captain Ross might have been nursing an ambition to have a Sokoto-
style administration, headed by himself and the Alaafin.
The British treatment of the Alaafin up to the end of Captain
Ross's residency made the latter realize the benefits of manipula-
ting his political masters. He succeeded under the British, and
sought to manipulate the indigenous governors in the same way. But
if the Action Group was to have freedom from colonialism as one of
its aims (as evident from its motto "Freedom for all, life more
abundant"), and if it was to unite all the Yoruba against British
rule, Chief Awolowo could hardly succeed with the Alaafin who had
all along been the protege of the British. Hence, Chief Awolowo's
line of action on the formation of the Action Group was natural.
It is true that the Yoruba were greatly divided by the civil war
of the nineteenth century, and the pattern of the military alliances
of the period seems repeated from time to time in the people's po-
litical alliances of the colonial and postcolonial periods. But the
claim of superiority, which from the beginning of the colonial peri-
od has hinged on who was supreme in the traditional history, was
then decided by victories in the battlefields. In fact, those who
dictated the events of the period were in some cases not the rulers

4Yoruba Kings - Order of Precedence, Confidential Dispatch 21/1031 (Oyo Prof

2/3) File 1372, NAI.

5Letter of 18 April 1902 from the Clerk of Native Affairs in Government House
in Lagos to the Ooni of Ife on the full list of the traditional rulers whose crowns
originally derived from Ife. C.S.O. 12/21/26 (1881/1902), NAI.

6Letter of 20 July 1903 from C.H. Elgee to Travelling Commissioner G. Ambrose

on the Crown of the Olosi of Osi, CSO 12/23/2 (72/1904), NAI.

7J. A. Atanda, The New Oyo Empire (London, 1973).

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROMODUDUWA 81

of the people; they were the soldiers of fortune to whom the rulers
looked in the face of attack.
Before the civil wars, fratricidal wars were very rare among the
various Yoruba kingdoms, which were independent of one another but
enjoyed one another's respect. They considered themselves relatives,
ebi, and lived together as in an extended family; Akinjogbin de-
scribes this as being like a commonwealth of states.8
Except in Ketu,9 the Yoruba rulers and the ruler of Benin
claim to have descended from Oduduwa, who, as I have indicated,
supposedly founded their monarchical form of government in Ile-Ife
and who all the Yoruba in Nigeria refer to as father. They call
themselves his children, "omo Oduduwa." Respected as he is among the
people and their rulers, however, the Yoruba traditions vary accord-
ing to their local sources on who Oduduwa was.
According to Ife tradition, Oduduwa was not only the first Yo-
ruba king, he was the person sent by God to create the earth on the
surface of water, after Obatala (who was sent originally) got drunk
and failed to perform the assignment.10 The tradition, according
to Babalola Ifatoogun (an Ifa priest informant in the Institute of
African Studies, University of Ibadan) is confirmed in Ifa divina-
tion verses. Remorseful for his failure, Obatala went back to God,
who then assigned him to create people. To the Yoruba, God is never
angry. Hence Obatala is the Yoruba creator god, whose resentment of
Oduduwa for taking over his original duty resulted in hateful en-
counters with the usurper.
However, the tradition of the origin of the Yoruba as written
partly from the extract made by Clapperton from the historical and
geographical works by the sultan of Sokoto and the Oyo oral sources
by Johnsonll associates him with an immigrant group from the east
who eventually placed themselves over the aboriginal inhabitants of
Ife.
Quite different from both the Ife and Oyo traditions is the Ketu
tradition which claims that Oduduwa was a woman, wife of Sopasan,
the prince of Ife who led the Ketu people from Ife to western
Yorubaland.12 This tradition, however, does not say whether she
was Sopasan's wife when he was in Ife or after he had left for
Ketuland. All other traditions concerning Oduduwa, notably in other
Yoruba and related kingdoms like Ila, Ilesa, and Benin, are emphatic
in Oduduwa being a man and a king in Ife, of which they are all
offshoots.
The apparent contradiction in the traditions, particularly those
of Oyo and Ife, has been brilliantly reconciled by Akinjogbin and

8I. A. Akinjogbin, Dahomeyand Ite Neighbours, 1708-1818 (Cambridge,

1967), 15.

9E. G. Parrinder, The Story of Ketu: An Ancient Yoruba Kingdom (Ibadan, 1967),
13.

10J. A. Ademakinwa, Ife, Cradle of the Yoruba, 2 vols. (Lagos, 1958); and
Fabunmi, Ife Shrinee (Ile-Ife, 1969), 6.

1lSamuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas (Lagos, 1921; reprinted 1976),
4-7.

12Parrinder, The Story of Ketu.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
82 CORNELIUSO. ADEPEGBA

s._ 1S i
.A,. je

S
*
^ .iS
^i
v R _
* _
*ri
____ . _
-.Pe
i B_
. ...

..1 s')

b2t#'f.+'
j| | |
U .

:!| F.;_
s
; >s
I a /
1w_ _
i ;B.X2OWQ-|
,L^a] '^ ,ai
t9SS { z
F| 0 5 S gE
b f sM - s ^

r ; *,, 1 B < i
__
ass;wX
X -t
_afr >sRF -_
> j <W_ tsst t .................. .j}_ ........ w w

s |
,jt' -

s---s: ,
W--w.ss
C_
.-

_ -_

Plate 1 Plate 2

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROMODUDUWA 83

Ayandele,13 who are of the view that the Oduduwa tradition should
not be seen as a myth; rather, it is the end of one and the begin-
ning of another period in the political and constitutional develop-
ment of the Yoruba. Making use of the Yoruba saying "Kutukutu Oba
Igbo; Osangagan Obamakin" ("early morning and afternoon," implying
that early kings of Ife were different from the later ones), and the
reference made to Oduduwa being lodged in the strangers' quarters in
Ife by some oral sources ikedu collected by one Odukoya, they postu-
late that the monarchical form of government had been established in
Ife before Oduduwa. The drunkenness of Obatala which resulted in his
failure to create the earth (a feat accomplished by Oduduwa) only
means that the take-over by Oduduwa was during the reign of Obatala.
Their interpretation is confirmed by the archaeological materials
from Ife which are of an artistic quality rare in sub-Saharan Africa.
Ife art, particularly in terra-cotta and cast metal (usually
referred to as bronze), is of a unique naturalism, which makes the
motifs depicted by the artist unmistakably identifiable. I have
looked at them several times and each encounter I had with the ob-
jects suggested new things to me as to their significance within
Yoruba culture. On one occasion, I looked for a possible relation-
ship between them and Nok terra-cotta arts, and discovered that the
kind of monarchy which, according to Yoruba traditions, was estab-
lished at Ife had its proto'type in Nok culture. The way the jewels
round the neck and on the chest are seen displayed on the royal
images in Ife art (Plate 1), a round bunch of neckwear worn on top
of a long bunch hanging from the neck over the chest' to the abdomen,
seems to have antecedents in Nok civilization. It is similarly de-
picted on a relief image on a piece of pottery from Kutofo (Plate 2)
and a kneeling figurine from Buhari. Hence it appears that despite
the wide time gap between the Nok and the apogee of Ife civiliza-
tions (which could become narrower with further archaeological dis-
coveties),14 the earlier plain-faced royalty of Ife might have
been related to the people of ancient Nok.
This observation seems to support Ade Obayemi's claim for the
possible migration of the Yoruba from the Niger/Benue conflu-
ence.15 This means that there might have been more than one wave
of migration to Yorubaland in the past, as there was still another
at a later date from the area east of Lake Chad, as the archaeo-
logical materials from ancient Ife will prove later in this paper.
I have also looked at the arts of Ife purely from their surface
patterns and their relationship to the present-day Yoruba markings
with a view to determining the possibility of their origins in nor-
thern Yorubaland.16 I came to the conclusions that (1) it was the

13I.A. Akinjogbin and E.A. Ayandele, "Yorubaland up to 1800," in Ikime,

Groundworkof Nigerian History, 121-143.
14See Jemkur's discovery at Nok reported in D. Calvocoressi and N. David, "A
New Survey of Radiocarbon and Thermoluminescence Dates for West Africa," Journal of
African History, 20 (1979), 1-20.

15Ade Obayemi, "The Yoruba and Edo-speaking Peoples and Their Neighbours
before 1600," in J.P.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder, eds., History of West Africa, I (2nd
ed.; London, 1976), 196-263.

16Cornelius 0. Adepegba, "Ife Art: An Enquiry into the Surface Patterns and
the Continuity of the Art Tradition Among the Northern Yoruba," forthcoming in West
African Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 13.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 84 CORNELIUSO. ADEPEGBA

:': S~~~~~~~~~~~.
* 2 =_: 1 ! _ a r Bl g VJ _ ....................................................
.. .. . .......

. ..... .
'...S ? I |

* j::..:o...9.eES | - *~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~la*

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROMODUDUWA 85

various patterns on Ife art objects that were modified, and in some
cases reduced and compounded into the present-day face and body
markings of the Yoruba; (2) body markings, particularly facial ones
- contrary to Stephens's view17 - can be used to determine the
provenance of Nigerian arts; and (3) there is no possibility that
the artistic tradition of Ife continued to flourish in northern
Yorubaland after its demise in ancient Ife.
More intriguing to me in the exercise is the thermoluminescence
dates obtained from the metal images of the royalty.18 The plain-
faced ones from Ita Yemoo (Plate 3) antedate those with striated
faces from Lafogido (Plate 1), and I examined this against the fact
that the rulers of Ile-Ife are not known to have ever worn face
marks*19 I concluded that there must have been two lines of rulers
in Ife - one represented by the plain-faced royal figures and the
present-day rulers of Ile-Ife, and the other represented by the
royal figures with striated faces which came in between the others.
I went further to say that since most of the Yoruba face mark pat-
terns which developed from those on Ife art are found among the Oyo
Yoruba, there was possibly a dynastic schism in Ife which made the
Oyo group leave Ife and brought back the original plain-faced rulers.
However, contrary to the view expressed by Akinjogbin and Ayan-
dele that the Obatala line lost the crown to the Oduduwa group but
were given functions within the new government,20 the Obatala line
was not completely ruled out as monarchs in Ife. This is buttressed
by evidence from Ife art and Yoruba religion. Obalufon, the succes-
sor to Oduduwa in the kinglist of Ife, was obviously related to the
original Obatala line.
According to Ife tradition, he was the person represented by the
only bronze face mask in Ife art. The mask is always put on during
the installation of a new Qoni to signify that the power to rule Ife
as a monarch is directly handed down to the Ooni-elect by Obalufon
as he got it from Oduduwa.21 Incidentally, the face mask, like the
early bronze heads, is plain-faced. Looking at the names of the Ife
rulers before Oduduwa, one can clearly see the relationship between
them and Obalufon. Obatala, from whom Oduduwa took over, and Oba
makin, as in Osangangan Obamakin (who as indicated earlier might
have been a ruler in Ife before Oduduwa) are names built up with the
word oba, the Yoruba word for king. The same is true of Obalufon. If
one cares to go further, beyond the period of human habitation in
Ife as mentioned by Ademakinwa, Sopona, the chief of the fearful
spirits who first inhabited Ife before man, is Obaluaye (the king
and lord of the world).22 In addition the offshoot of Igbo kings,
with which the Obatala group who founded Ijebu-Ode is traditionally
associated, is Obanta.23

17Phillip Stephens, The Stone Imaes of se (Ibadan, 1978), 62-63.

18Calvocoressi and David, "A New Survey."

19Adeboye Babalola, Oriki OriZe n.p. (Collins, 1973).

20Akinjogbin and Ayandele, "Yorubaland up to 180O."

2lAdemakinva, Ife, Parts I & II, 59; and 1II, 32.

22Ademakinwa, Ife,
23Ademakinwa, Ife, and Johnson, History of the Yorubase 19.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
86 CORNELIUSO. ADEPEGBA

__ __
__s
__
V _r __ -. tl
l_' x . . __

.'4 . '
'S:
l. 4 + n; Y
4 .f {s

_r .. :
1'<_ ^
.__
__

_ '4^X_
_.
_M. . . :Rr__
:.i _
_A:

.......s.
__M
..........__
iF
. _ __7
rw ._
r
_EMq . >... s7._ _|., . Aw __
,^
#Xtt ].y

_: t rik y s ]#_
_fiNS * .::_

W_
.

_S
_r _LE,,
. __

^ntv }t.s ;;s,

.

}w')
. _.

b .e

- SEi e<tr: -.;w _ _

.{' ^. -/ 's ._
_s_ _ . J 1_

.ors.^>:i
_i.
_'
_ ' sy w
}vv
sw ss "
...
' tJ r }
..,...
'' Jlt
.
. a.
S../
i,=
.. t.5
+;.11 sf .. J_

o4;Y ''' i ' ' os

b../an.
% ^ tvE

'S'+...,cA?.
. & fE +''S^<
,.WSS .:. @i
i .,..X, .',, .
siX;tX'gt,
hEh,X>...:.z:....;.j
r _ . . t ....
_E.l N 1^ ;.
} a a__
P C5Si_
C, t1a __
. i ZZ
ii fl i_
. n v

4 P_
. $**_
- .L'r
::S
=83?. =__
i a rwi __
RIf-
. Ik _
. it!_
...44

.Ng7a_
:.f..,9.._
U ri _

...M
- a>. 3K_
r.eb
>;s_
=_
_

Plate 4

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROMODUDUWA 87

Obalufon, the successor of Oduduwa on Ife throne who is associ-

ated with this early line of rulers, is not a mean figure in Yoruba
political and religious development. He is known for founding many
Yoruba communities and handing down crowns to some Yoruba obas. He
is the founder of Erin-ile and Iddo Osun, and the crowns handed down
by him can be found in Ife and Efon Alaye. He is also widely wor-
shipped as a deity, just like Obatala. The dresses of his votaries,
like those of the votaries of Obatala, should always be white -
another indication of his relationship to the Obatala line.
In its own case, the association of Oduduwa with the striated
faces seems to confirm the story of migration with which he is as-
sociated in Oyo. The Oyo tradition relates him to an immigrant group
who settled and consequently ruled in Ife. The original home of the
group was towards the northeast, and is usually taken to be Mecca.
The striations seen on Ife heads and figures are similar to various
face mark patterns around Lake Chad. The Kanuri and related groups
have facial marks which consist of various numbers of vertical
strokes. Their marks were formerly greater in number than they are
now.24 Similar patterns exist beyond the Nigerian border towards
the Sudan.25 The astonishing thing is the fact that the Kanuri and
some other ethnic groups in northern Nigeria (like the Gobirawa)
claim to have been related to the Yoruba, and their marks can be
related either to the striations on the art works or the Yoruba
marks which have evolved from them. The Gobirawa in the northwest,
whose facial mark patterns are somewhat different from the stria-
tions, made up of vertical striations from the head across the tem-
ple but met on the cheek by a number of gashes which converge at the
corners of the mouth, can also be said to have compounded their own
original vertical patterns into their present pattern as the Yoruba
did with the striations on Ife heads. In both cases, the remnants of
the vertical marks are now confined to the side of the head across
the temple.
All these various bits of evidence suggest the possibility that
the striated heads in Ife art represent the Oduduwa group. Because
of their dates, which are more recent than those of the plain-faced
images, they also raise the possibility that the Oduduwa group might
have immigrated from some regions east of Lake Chad. It is possible
that the migration was connected with the disintegration of the
first Kanuri empire, caused in part by the Drought of the Sacred
Mune dated to c. 1280-1340 A,D.
The suggestion that the original home of the Oduduwa group was
in Mecca, however, as indicated in the traditions of migration, is
far from reality. The people represented by the striated figures and
heads are negroes and so also must have been the immigrants.
The striated figures also confirm the link between the ruling
dynasty in Benin and the Oduduwa group in Ife, In Benin art, one
royal figure in Ife style and a figure in one ornamental piece have
the vertical striations (Plate 4). The naturalism and the striations
on the royal figure, as well as its thermoluminescence date, vali-

24See C.O. Adepegba, "Survey of Nigerian Body Markings and Their Relationship
to other Nigerian Arts" (Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 1976), 65.

25j. Decorse, "Le Tatonage: Le mutilations ethniques et la parure chez les

populations du Soudan," L'Anthropologie, 16 (1905), 33. This shows the Bargimi,
Kotoko, and Barma, all of the Chad area.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
88 CORNELIUS0. ADEPEGBA

date the Benin tradition of origin of both the dynasty and the art
of metal-casting which is said to have been introduced to Benin from
Ife. However, the traditional Benin marks depicted on the majority
of Benin royal arts are different from the striation common to many
Ife heads and the royal figure from Benin. The Benin traditional
marks as observed by Osifekunde, four to eight vertical cuts on the
forehead,26 are related to the marks depicted on the majority of
Benin heads and the traditional Benin marks as described by Eghar-
evba27 were not adopted until the monarchs of Benin ordered the
striation of the people in about 1400 A.D. The royal figure is pos-
sibly Oranmiyan, the prince of the Oduduwa line, who was the father
of Eweka the fivst. Since markings were not forced on or adopted in
Benin until the dynasty was established and the markings adopted
were vertical (like the striations on Ife heads and figures), it is
possible that the reluctance of the people of Benin to accept the
practice of body marking was responsible for the difference in the
quantity-of the traditional Benin markings and the striations on Ife
arts and the king figure from Benin. The traditional Benin markings
appear as the token of the striations on the Ife art pieces.
Oduduwa's reign in Ife was as remarkable for performance as the
Obatala before him was seen for his lack of performance. But the Ife
tradition onto which Oduduwa's reign was grafted was so powerful
that the Oduduwa reign was eventually absorbed. Therefore the prac-
tice of face markings which is foreign to Ife but by which the Odu-
duwa line is recognized was easily forgotten. Hence the rulers of
Ife claim never to have worn face markings.
How Oduduwa became king in Ife is not certaln. It might not have
been through the use of force. It is even possible that he himself
was not one of the immigrants, but one of their descendants, prob-
ably born and raised in Ife. The Ketu tradition which refers to him
as a woman perhaps indicates that he was of a female line. In fact,
the tradition seems unaware of the Obatala line. The dynasty of Ife
was one and it was from it that Sopasan moved out to found Ketu.
This possibly indicates that the founder of Ketu left Ife before
Oduduwa was king. The common face markings of the Ketu Yoruba con-
sist of two to three vertical gashes over the cheek bones. The ver-
ticality of the gashes would have passed for the abbrev'ation of the
vertical striations on Ife but for the ample evidence which shows
that three vertical markings are recent Islamic 'imports from Sudan
and Saudi Arabia.28 Like the Obatala line, the Ketu Yoruba were
unmarked until recently. So the founder might have been an offshoot
of the original line of rulers. In fact, the name Sopasan (the name
of the founder of Ketu) seems close to Sopona, the name of the lead-
er of the fearful spirits who inhabited Ife before human habitation
and which I have taken as being one of the rulers of the original
line of Ife.
Matrilineal succession now seems alien to Yoruba culture, but it
could not be ruled out in ancient Yoruba kingdoms, particularly if

26philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered (Ibadan, 1967), 256.

27Jacob Egharevbat Benin Law and Custom (Port Harcourt, 1949), 100.

28See Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 107, The mark is also said to have been
cosmonly displayed in Sudan and Mecca in the nineteenth century. See R. F. Burton,
Prsona Narrative of Pigrme to Mecca (London, 1893), it, 233-234.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROM ODUDUWA 89

women could be rulers as with Luwo29 who is associated with pot-

sherd pavement in Ife and six female rulers indicated in the king
list of Ijesaland.30 The first daughter of the son of Oduduwa,
Okanbi, is said to be the mother of the Olowu of Owu according to
Oyo tradition.31 Similarly, the mother of Alaketu is said to be
the second daughter of Okanbi,32 though the story is not supported
in Ketu. At any rate, with birth connections and a remarkable per-
formance, Oduduwa could have been accepted as father by both his own
people and the original line of rulers from whom he took over and
who eventually took over from him.
Competition for the throne is usually not without bitterness
among the Yoruba. The re-enactment of a certain conflict during the
annual worship festival of Obatala in Ife represents the conflict
which arose in one of the takeovers (the one by Oduduwa from Obatala
and the one from Oduduwa by Obalufon). Today, losers often resort to
litigation. But in the past, when the winner was eventually the
court or judiciary, losers used to leave their communities out of
shame or anger or the fear that they would be oppressed by the
winners. It might be for this reason that certain Ife princes left
Ife, to found their own kingdoms after the throne had been recap-
tured from Oduduwa or his line. But the need for legitimacy in their
respective domains might have made them turn to the father monarch
at Ife from whom most of them receive the sword of authority.
We can now turn to the question of Oduduwa as contained in Oyo
tradition. Oduduwa is taken as the father of the Alaafin of Oyo and
six other rulers while the Ooni is supposed to be the slave priest
put in charge of Oduduwa's shrine. But from the available archaeo-
logical materials viewed against the practice in Old Oyo described
in oral sources, the descent of Oyo rulers from Oduduwa is somehow
questionable. Though it is only among the Oyo Yoruba that the Yoruba
face mark patterns which developed from the striations on Ife arts
are adopted, the people of the Old Oyo capital were not associated
with such marks. Those in the old capital are generally known as
Atabaja_ those who wear abaja face mark patterns. They too refer to
themselves as such. AZabaja ka re' Le, Oyo dun j'oko lo ("Wearers of
abaja masks, let us go home; Oyo, the capital, is more pleasant than
the farm or provinces") is part of their praise songs. Abaja marks
are face mark patterns whose components are without the temple or
the side of the nose marks (PeZe consists of three vertical marks on
the cheek and is not considered abaja.) Abaja marks consist mainly
of parallel horizontal gashes which occasionally can be surmounted
by three short vertical gashes on the cheek bones. They are referred
to according to the families wearing them or, more commonly, by the
number of cuts which make them. There are abaja of three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, and eleven strokes. Three to five are usu-
ally horizontal parallel single strokes. Six can be two sets of
three horizontal ones or three horizontal surmounted by three ver-

29See the king list of Ife in Ademakinwa, Tf.

30The king list of Ijesaland is in J.A. Oni, A History of 1jeshal (n.p., no
date), 57.

3lJohnson, History of the Yorubas, 7-8.

32 Ibid.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
90 CORNELIUS0. ADEPEGBA

tical ones on the cheek bone. Eight could be two sets of four paral-
lel marks or four groups of two horizontal parallel marks made on
top of one another at regular intervals. It is only in the Ejigbo
and Ilobu area that I have come across this second type. The abaja
of eleven is only the first type of eight surmounted with three
vertical ones on the cheek bone.
The earliest abaja pattern was likely to have been three, and
the three most likely resulted from the traditional "cat's whiskers"
which are made basically of three gashes converging at the corners
of the mouth.33 The "cat's whiskers" are also represented in the
arts of ancient Ife, on terracotta pieces. The Yoruba face mark
patterns (related to the striations on Ife art as depicted on the
second dynasty, which may have been Oduduwa group) are gombo, which
have vertical elements across the temple added to some abaja pat-
terns. Keke, another word for the pattern, can be misleading in that
it could refer to patterns with temple elements which are of free
short cuts. In Ife, it is even used as a name for the basic abaja of
three which Johnson reports as the common mark of Ile-Ife,34 but
which might have been of only the Modakeke part of the town, which
is Oyo in origin.
If the abaja are the metropolitan Oyo marks and the gombo which
apparently evolved from the royal striations of Ife were not common
to the capital, it means that the rulers of Oyo cannot have de-
scended from the straited royal figures of Ife, which might have
been Oduduwa dynasty.
My effort to find out more about the royal marks of Oyo reveals
that the present abaja of six now adopted by the Oyo royalty belong-
ed to the mother of Atiba, the first king in the present Oyo; the
royal marks in Oyo-Ile were not six, but three. This was confirmed
by the family of Ona Oniseawo, who have changed their original ab-
aja, however, from three on the two sides of the face to abaja of
three on one side of the face and pele on the other, on the instruc-
tion of the oracle when the family was suffering from infant mortal-
ity. The three horizontal ones are said to have come down to them
from Sango, an early Oyo king, and they generally do not marry from
Oyo royalty. They too have the royal eyo marks on the arm, and their
story is confirmed by Omokiti and some families in Ona-Isokun Oke
compound who also wear abaja of three on the two sides of their
faces and have the royal marks on the arm. They too are related to
the Oyo royalty according to tradition.
The significance of this is that the Oyo ruling house did not
develop directly from the lines of the rulers represented in the
arts of Ife. As abaja patterns very likely developed from the "cat's
whiskers" in Ife art and the "cat's whiskers" have been ascertained
to be Yoruba marks,35 there is no doubt that the Oyo rulers were
Ife in origin. But in Ife there is no evidence that they belonged to
the ruling line. Since Yoruba face marks are adopted according to
the father's family, they must have been a group of people in Ife

33Arnold Rubin, "Review of Willett: Ife in the History of West African

Sculptures," Art BuZZetin, 52, 3 (1970), 348-354.

34Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 108.

35Adepegba, "Ife Art."

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 THE DESCENT FROMODUDUWA 91

who succeeded in establishing themselves in Oyo but who used the

descent of a much-revered ruler of Ife to validate their positions.
The claim of the Ooni to be the descendant of a slave of Oduduwa
is untenable. If any of the Yoruba traditional rulers is to be asso-
ciated with a slave origin, the Alaafin of Oyo would be the most
likely candidate, in the light of the origin of their facial mark-
ings. The abaja markings for which they are known, as mentioned
above, developed from the "cat's whiskers." In the praise songs of
the rulers of both Ife and Oyo, the cat's whiskers are considered a
slave mark.36 It is also the mark borne by the figure of the
cross-bearer, which in Benin art has been identified as the mes-
senger from Ife.37 It is the prevalence of the mark in the Niger
Benue confluence that made Ryder suggest that the kingdom of the
overlord of Benin when the Portuguese arrived was northeast of Benin
according to the direction the Benin people pointed to as its loca-
tion.38
The etymological explanations for Adimula and Ooni, which are
the titles of Ife rulers with which the claim is illustrated, are
wrong. Adimula, which is said to have been contracted to mean
"Adimu, the slave, has become rich" as a word means "that which or
he who is held on to and saves one." In essence, the title simply
means savior. Ooni simply means "the owner of," particularly in the
eastern Yoruba dialects. Thus Oonife, as the title is fully said,
means "the owner of Ife."1
Equally untenable is the claim that the founder of Oyo was the
prince who inherited land from Oduduwa. It is true that some time
before colonialism, the Oyo kingdom was the largest and the most
powerful of Yoruba kingdoms. But there was nothing to show that
before the Yoruba civil war of the nineteenth century, Oyo had any
control over the domains of any of Ife, Ila, Ilesa, Owu, or Benin,
all of which are southern and southeastern kingdoms which sprang
from Ife.
Occasional references are made to the aberrant form of the crown
which the Ooni used to put on in recent times. The crown, unlike the
conical beaded crown with fringes common to Yoruba rulers, is a
headpiece of a band round the head with a circular frontal focus in
which some Ifa divination signs were made. Its form of a band with a
frontal focus seems more related to the ancient Ife crowns as de-
picted in Ife arts.
The headpieces which are related to the common Yoruba crowns are
yet to be found in the archaeological materials of Ife. Two of the
bronze figures found in Nupeland are conical-like Yoruba crowns and
one of them even has the gathering-of-birds motif like the present
Yoruba crowns. But they have no fringes and their place of manufac-
ture has not been ascertained to be Ife. The conical shape of the
crown also appears on the miniature royal figure in Ife style and
with the Ife type of striation found in Benin. But instead of

361n Babalola, Oriki OriZe, and C.L. Adeoye, Oroko Yoruba (Ibadan, 1972),
61-64, the "cat's whisker" is referred to as Data, streaks of saliva and is
associated with bad or ordinary slaves, erukeru.

37F. C. Alan Ryder, "A Reconsideration of the Ife-Benin Relationship," Journal

of African History, VI (1965), 25-37.

38 Iid.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
92 CORNELIUS0. ADEPEGBA

fringes round the crowns, the headpiece on the miniature royal fig-
ure only has two fringes, one hanging down on each of its sides.
In conclusion, the archaeological and ethnographic evidence made
use of in this paper clearly indicates that if any rulers of the
kingdoms which sprang from Ife descended directly from Oduduwa, it
is only the ruler of Benin. The ruler of Ife belonged to the pre-
Oduduwa rulers of the town. The Alaafin of Oyo cannot even be traced
to either Oduduwa or the rulers of Ife before and after Oduduwa. The
claims of superiority based on descent from Oduduwa should therefore
not be seen as anything more than fabrications for self-aggrandize-
ment which certainly do not represent a true national history of the
Yoruba people.

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 20:22:12 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions